Like the merchant class of Carthage who, when the Gerusia responded favorably to an appeal from Hannibal for large quantities of silver coin with which to dissolve the Roman system of alliances and co-optations, selfishly went secretly to the judges of the Carthaginian supreme court, bribes in hand, and suborned the judges' invalidation of the new tax.
For a few good quarters, the merchants doomed their city, their families, and their children. But then, given discount rates, that is what a Harvard MBA would have told them to do, too.
Of course the lights went out in Rome half a millennium later, as a result of centuries of policies similar to those favored in Washington today.
But to return to Carthage. To me the most powerful scene in the movie "Paton" was where he looks over the site of ancient Carthage, and reflects on War.